Why should I care about NBC’s new drama “The Inbetween”?

It seems to be a very over-used TV trope. Someone can speak to the dead, and the dead can answer back. Yeah, it’s only been done on network TV just once or twice … Ghost Whisperer, Medium, Tru Calling, Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me, heck we could go back to the days of Topper and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir if we wanted to.

So I’m looking at the new NBC fall schedule, seeing if Timeless will get another season (it’s still on the bubble), and lo and behold NBC has a new drama called The Inbetween, about a girl who can talk to the dead and the dead can talk back.

The show stars Harriet Dyer as the person who has the clairvoyance gimmick. So this is supposed to be a mid-season replacement show, so we probably won’t see it until 2019 at the earliest…

Wait a second.

Harriet Dyer. Where do I know that name?

Where do I know that face?

Where do I …

Hang on a s econd…

Is it…

Is she….

Hang on a second.

Gotta go back to my computer here…

See, for about four years I downloaded an Australian soap drama called Love Child. It was a period drama about unwed expectant mothers in late 1960’s Sydney. Here’s a clip.

I really dug this show. Yeah, at times it was a bit over the top and saccharine and whatnot, but it was a fun watch. I had always hoped the program would get up to the United States, maybe on a streaming video service or on one of the high-number cable channels – it did air for one season in Canada, but that’s about it.

Harriet Dyer …

CRIKEY, MATE, it’s Pattie Saunders!

Oh my God it’s Pattie Saunders!!

And any of you who have never seen this show are now scratching your heads and saying, “Who the hell is Pattie Saunders?”

Now I know how someone feels when they have to explain what happened in the past ten years of The Young and the Restless. “Okay, it’s later that day…”

Here’s the synopsis. Pattie was one of the five pregnant teenagers at Stanton House, a maternity home for unwed women that was adjacent to King’s Cross Hospital. This is the late 1960’s, when abortion was illegal and these pregnant women – if they were unmarried – were legally ordered to give up their babies for adoption. Pattie had this romantic notion that her boyfriend would marry her and they would be a happy family. That didn’t happen, and eventually Pattie reluctantly gave up her child. However, she eventually opened up a day care center and nursery. Of course, being a soap opera, by the third season she was involved in a sexual tryst with another character’s husband, and was killed off at the start of the show’s fourth and final season.

I told you it was a soap opera, you didn’t believe me?

Anyways, the show lasted for four seasons – 36 episodes – it won several Australian broadcasting awards, and opened up a dialogue in the country about one of Australia’s dirty little secrets – forced adoption of the children of unmarried mothers. We’ll discuss the other Australian dirty little secrets – the stolen generation, among others – in a future blog.

Anyways, if you’re looking for Harriet Dyer in these clips – full episodes of Love Child are not available on YouTube or on any American streaming service – she’s the one that’s wearing the headband.

And now she’s got a chance to lead her own American network drama.

Okay. I’ll give the new NBC drama The Inbetween a chance.

Of course, I wouldn’t mind an Americanized version of Love Child appearing in the States as well. Anybody? Netflix? Hulu? HBO?